Reconstruction talk:Proto-Japonic/u

Reconstruction?
This strikes me as extremely unlikely. The contortions required to go from to  leave me most unconvinced. The root of is, and that final  is an integral part of this verb stem. Any derivation or shift from the root will include this. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 23:07, 3 June 2019 (UTC)


 * , thank you for the go at improving things.
 * A derivation from -ay is still problematic, however. The underlying root form of this verb is .  I see no clear path phonologically for -ay to result in .  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 22:22, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this was a post-Japonic innovation, in which the PJ potential suffix was separated and then taken as a verb meaning "get, attain". In any case, if it was an actual verb, reconstructing would be the go-to case here, but where is the stem of the verb? (e.g.  with a stem *kur-, yielding ). Kwékwlos (talk) 22:27, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , the terminal form of the verb would have been just . This was conjugated as a  verb.  See Classical_Japanese for details on this conjugation pattern.  We have ample historical examples of this verb displaying the root  as far back as at least the , completed in 759.
 * In short, even had the potential suffix -ay been treated as a standalone verb stem, there is no phonologically sensible way to derive u from ay. No such derivation appears to be possible.  Going the other way, we potentially have both historical and reconstructed examples in the ways that verb conjugations have evolved, were u becomes e.  But as you note, that's more a case of suffixing and fusion, and we'd still need to have the verb core to start from.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 20:18, 13 February 2020 (UTC)


 * , revisiting this, I realize that I'm not sure what you mean by "the potential suffix *-ay. Are you referring to the -e that appears in modern transitive godan verbs, such as  → ?
 * If so, there's a paper from 2016 by that lays out a compelling case that this -e is not from this same verb, but instead arose through a shift from  to  as a means of using transitive yodan verbs in an ergative fashion to talk about how the objects can be  -ed.  Similar to English expressions like "this car drives well" or "this cake bakes quickly", using usually-transitive verbs in an ergative fashion with the usually-objects as subjects instead, to talk about a quality of the usually-objects in relation to the action of the verb.  This derivation is also why the grammar of potential verbs is often weird for English speakers learning Japanese -- in English, potential is talked about as an ability of the agent, whereas in Japanese, it's instead a quality of the patient.   in Japanese conceptual terms is not so much "I can speak Japanese" and instead "for me, Japanese is speakable".  See also this post I wrote over on the Japanese Stack Exchange about this specific class of potential verbs.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 17:21, 8 December 2022 (UTC)


 * continuing this, what would be the best reconstruction instead of mistaken *airu? Kwékwlos (talk) 23:44, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I suspect just /u/. The Ryukyuan reflexes of Japanese vowel-stem verbs and irregular verb  seem to all be reflections of an ancient compound formation, whereby we use the continuative / gerundive / infinitive / -masu stem + some other element (possibly wiru?) that reduces to /uN/ or just /N/.  For example, modern 🇨🇬 had Old Japanese terminal form /ku/, and this reflects in Okinawan as /t͡ɕu:N/ -- apparently from continuative stem ki- + this other element.  Modern 🇨🇬 from older /sirasu/ reflects as sirasjuN.  Poking around JLect, I cannot find any reflections of 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, so I cannot confirm the Ryukyuan descendants we currently list.  That said, I do see some places where Japanese verb stems ending in /-e/ reflect as /-iN/, such as keru "to kick" appearing as Okinawan /kiːN/.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:24, 28 February 2023 (UTC)